The global competition to dominate artificial intelligence has reached a fever pitch, but one of the world’s leading computer scientists warned that Big Tech is recklessly gambling with the future of the human species.
The loudest voices in AI often fall into two camps: those who praise the technology as world-changing, and those who urge restraint—or even containment—before it becomes a runaway threat. Stuart Russell, a pioneering AI researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, firmly belongs to the latter group. One of his chief concerns is that governments and regulators are struggling to keep pace with the technology’s rapid rollout, leaving the private sector locked in a race to the finish that risks devolving into the kind of perilous competition not seen since the height of the Cold War.
“For governments to allow private entities to essentially play Russian roulette with every human being on earth is, in my view, a total dereliction of duty,” Russell told AFP at the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi.
While tech CEOs are locked in an “arms race” to develop the next and best AI model, a goal the industry maintains will eventually herald enormous advancements in medicinal research and productivity, many ignore or gloss over the risks, according to Russell. In a worst-case scenario, he believes the breakneck speed of innovation without regulation could lead to the extinction of the human race.
